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Vesely, P., Bloom, L., & Sherlock, J. (2007). Key elements of building online community: Comparing faculty and student perceptions. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 3(3), 234-246. Vesely, Bloom, and Sherlock (2007) document that essential to the learning process is the student/student and student/teacher interaction, and building this community of learners is more challenging in online. Students in blended courses felt interaction may be better than in traditional courses. Students who feel silenced in onsite class discussions are more apt to contribute online. Seeking help can be a determining factor in successful learning. In the online communities, help is available virtually around the clock from the instructors and fellow classmates. Furthermore, through their experiences in the blended course, students would better understand the significance of managing their time, cultivating their study environment, regulating their effort, seeking appropriate support, and learning from classmates. In my experience, students reported that their online interaction with classmates had greatly assisted in their comprehension of course materials. Central to how they felt about blended learning was the quality and quantity of student and faculty interaction. In blended courses, students are often required to engage actively by reading and responding to discussion forum postings that become a permanent record of their participation and learning, rather than passively attending classes. Perceptions of interaction from faculty are also positive for blended courses. Faculty renovate their teaching methods by placing onsite lectures online and adding supplementary activities to aid student learning. Blended teaching and learning transforms education from "a command and control structure to a connect and collaborate environment" (Moskal, Dziuban, Upchurch, Hartman, & Truman, 2006) which is more student-centered than faculty-controlled. For faculty, the quality

A Comparative Content Analysis of Student Interaction in Synchronous and Asynchronous Learning Networks Chou, C. C. A Comparative Content Analysis of Student Interaction in Synchronous and Asynchronous Learning Networks. By comparing the student interactions in synchronous and asynchronous Computer-Mediated Communication systems, this paper scrutinizes the patterns of learner-learner interaction in a distance-learning environment. The study results showed the students spent more time in task-oriented interaction in asynchronous discussions than in synchronous mode.

One potential casualty when courses move online - or even when face-to-face courses incorporate web-based technologies - is collaboration. Many instructors fear they will lose opportunities to interact with their students - and that their students will lose the ability to interact with one another.

I think this is an interesting and interactive tool. Doceri , One way to Flip a Classroom. Check this site Mukesh

Great article on getting students interactive and motivated in class and in coursework.

Are you looking to create interactive visualizations of data? ChartsBin "is a web-based data visualization tool that will allow everyone to quickly and easily create rich interactive visualizations with their own data. You can then share your interactive visualizations with others by embedding them in websites, blogs or sharing via Facebook or Twitter. We're focused on building the most exciting and engaging destination for statisticians, and computer scientists in the world."

Interactive Learning Tools

The idea of storyboarding was developed at the Walt Disney Studio during the early 1930s. storyboard for video production is essentially a large comic of the film or some section of the film produced beforehand to help directors, cinematographers and television commercial advertising clients visualize the scenes and find potential problems before they occur. Often storyboards include arrows or instructions that indicate movement.More recently the term storyboard has been used in the fields of web development, software development and instructional design to present and describe, in written, interactive events as well as audio and motion, particularly on user interfaces and electronic pages.

This tool is mainly for instructors in the biological sciences. The site allows you to select high quality educational videos on a topic and easily build interactive questions on top of the videos.

This blog reviews the transition to live interaction for online learning.

Study Boost provides an interactive social media platform that takes learning outside the classroom. Add questions for students to review.

Interesting read - I found the shift from taped lecture to a more interactive setting interesting... "Udacity, along with other MOOC designers, is moving rapidly away from the video lecture model of teaching toward an approach that is highly interactive and based on frequent quizzes and human "mentors" to provide active online support for students."

Edpuzzle is a Web-based application that allows instructors (and students) to upload videos or use pre-existing streaming videos from YouTube or Vimeo and overlay test/assessment items to create a more interactive lesson. Instructors can stop videos at anytime and present assessment items to check for understanding. Videos become lessons and engaging presentations. Great for flipped classrooms...............and it's free!

Here is a well done interactive tutorial for the library sciences. RIOT = Research Information Online Tutorial.

Back to May 1970--a paper on the beginnings of CAI, Computer Assisted Instruction, and a preview of online learning and "Man-Machine" interactions.

Follow this blog for tips, templates, and discussions related to e-learning.

Here's a free PowerPoint template I built for a recent workshop. I used it to show how to create interactive conversations in PowerPoint using hyperlinks. In this example it's a simple back and forth conversation. This free template could be used as a way to share manager/employee information or perhaps as an FAQ interaction.

This was an interesting list that suggested social media tools to use as alternatives to those that dominate social interaction on the web. The idea behind the suggestions are that for many students Facebook and Twitter exist within a personal social sphere, and that offering a separate space for academic interaction can help preserve the distinction between the two. Tom addressed the benefits of that approach and reasons why it may be worth pursuing in his post this week in the Technology Tools class.

tools and constructivism

Love that the "practical descriptions of constructivist learning" listed in the article "[C]onstructivist learning should engage students in meaningful learning and ... the critical features are that the learning should be ... * Active and manipulative, engaging students in interactions and explorations with learning materials and provid[ing] opportunities for them to observe the results of their manipulations * Constructive and reflective, enabling students to integrate new ideas with prior knowledge to make meaning and enable learning through reflection * Intentional, providing opportunities for students to articulate their learning goals and monitor their progress in achieving them * Authentic, challenging and real-world (or simulated), facilitating better understanding and transfer of learning to new situations * Cooperative, collaborative, and conversational, providing students with opportunities to interact with each other to clarify and share ideas, to seek assistance, to negotiate problems, and discuss solutions."

Abstract: As more and more instructors enter the world of online teaching and learning, a body of knowledge is emerging around the challenge of facilitating online interaction and fostering online collaboration. This paper draws from the literature on asynchronous learning and the authors' own experiences with online discussion and collaborative online projects. We identify a variety of techniques for focusing student dialogue, fostering an online learning community, and promoting successful collaboration. Instructors who are teaching wholly online courses or simply integrating online components into face-to-face classes will benefit from the observations and discussion.